Two years ago, in September of 2023, Chris Stapleton and Snoop Dogg became the new musical figures of NFL Monday Night Football. Well, tonight, Monday, September 8, 2025, Stapleton and Snoop resolidified themselves as the voices of Monday Night Football with their reimagined cover of Phil Collins’ 1981 staple, “In The Air Tonight”.
Before the Minnesota Vikings and Chicago Bears face off in the inaugural Monday night game for the 2025-2026 season, Stapleton, Snoop, and Cindy Blackman Santana will grace the screen and once again pump millions of viewers across the world for the game of the evening. The return of Snoop and Stapleton marks the grand return of Monday Night Football as a whole, and ESPN decided to give us all an early glimpse at this season’s theme song.
Phil Collins’ 1981 single, “In The Air Tonight,” has always been a crowd favorite, and so have Stapleton and Snoop. That being so, it is no surprise that NFL watchers across the world are still raving about the now two-year-old Monday Night Football theme song.
During the broadcast of the performance, one user wrote, “Happy they brought back Chris Stapleton and Snoop Dogg for the intro!”
Per fans’ reactions, it seems Stapleton and Snoop still own the MNF pregame. Consequently, one should probably expect the NFL, ABC, and ESPN to hold onto this theme song for the foreseeable future.
One Country Star for Another: Behind the NFL’s Big Theme Song Switch
Before Chris Stapleton was MNF’s country music superstar, it was Hank Williams Jr.. For more than 20 years, Hank Williams Jr. was the voice of Monday Night Football, as his 1984 hit song “All My Rowdy Friends Are Coming Over Tonight” was reworked and retitled to “All My Rowdy Friends Are Here on Monday Night.”
ABC first debuted Williams Jr.’s reworked classic in 1989. Subsequently, it was taken off the air in 2011, then returned briefly in 2017, and was then officially removed in 2020. Fast forward three years, and the job to create a new theme went to Stapleton and Snoop. Which brings us to here, and now, humming the Phil Collins hit while we watch the Vikings take on the Bears.
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